Here's what I suggest

Posted by LISW on April 18, 2005 at 22:35:10

In Reply to: I disagree posted by Porceleindoll on April 18, 2005 at 18:16:23:

I'm just trying to figure out how serious Jim is about true advocacy versus self-promotion. If he's serious about advocacy, he'll talk about who he's gotten engaged in the corrections system to take a look at this case. I asked Jim point blank if he's been talking to the prison psychiatrist because that is a very important person where the fate of this SGA is concerned.

Jim may get the kid another defense lawyer, who will hire a shrink who says, Yep, the kid needs to be on a unit. But the prosecutor's office and corrections systems will weigh in with their shrinks. The most significant player in the game is the prison shrink, because the prison system has the kid now and it will literally take an act of God to pry him loose before his time is served.

Of course, you don't have to believe me, and Uncle Jim doesn't has to do anything but announce his crusade, and we all feel better, because somebody is trying to do something.

Why is this kid different from any other kid who is horribly abused growing up? The prisons are full of them. Suddenly we care about this one kid because he's Family? So this kid deserves our compassion and has less personal responsibility for his crimes than all the other abused kids who turn violent and end up doing time?

Wah, wah, wah. Cry me an ocean with your bleeding liberal heart. This is American social welfare since 1990: It's three hots and a cot in PRISON. You don't like it? Try working for social change in a country that thinks it's OK to execute 15-year-olds for blowing out the brains of their abusers. Yeah, I guess I can get a little worked up at all the self-interested sympathy for "me and mine" but not an ounce of concern about the cruel, unjust, ignorant social policies that put hundreds of others like him there every day.

Here's what I would suggest as an intervention: Jim asks the young man if he wants some pen pals. SGAs who give a rats ass about this kid start corresponding with him, encouraging him, finding out as much as they can about what he thinks he needs. If the kid doesn't want psychiatric treatment, no one in the prison system will force it on him unless he's a danger to himself or others. As long as he's in solitary, he's being kept safe from self-injury. If he gets transferred to a prison psych unit, they'll drug him into a state of zombiehood.

But I'm sure Uncle Jim bothered to find that out before he started advocating to get the kid transferred to a prison psych unit. Sounds like a good plan, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.